Flying Magazine reports that the U.S. Air Force’s new Boeing T-7A Red Hawk advanced trainer has finished extreme temperature testing to evaluate “its endurance from hot deserts to deep-freeze conditions.” The monthlong trial, conducted at the McKinley Climatic Lab at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, included testing the aircraft’s electronics and instrumentation “in temperatures ranging from 110 degrees to minus-25 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Full Story (Flying Magazine)
Tag: Florida
Crew-8 Splashes Down Off the Coast of Pensacola, Florida
Spaceflight Now reports that three U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut have “returned to Earth after spending more than seven months in space.” Crew-8 includes NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin.
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Video
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 Re-entry and Splashdown
(NASA; YouTube)
SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Payload for AST SpaceMobile, Lands Booster
SPACE reports, “AST SpaceMobile’s first five commercial satellites have reached orbit. The huge spacecraft, called BlueBirds, lifted off today (Sept. 12) at 4:52 a.m. EDT (0852 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. … Each BlueBird sports a communications antenna that covers 693 square feet (64 square meters) when unfolded — the largest such array ever deployed by a commercial spacecraft.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Video
SpaceX launches Polaris Dawn crew on first private spacewalk mission (Launch at 00:33 second mark)
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)
The Next Generation of Spacesuits Being Designed Digitally
Former Astronaut Leads Development of Virtual Digital Twins for High-Performance, Custom-Fit Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Spacesuits
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla. – During her astronaut career flying on five Space Shuttle missions, Professor Bonnie J. Dunbar recalls the challenges of ill-fitting EVA “modular, mix-and-match” spacesuits. Ironically, it was during training in Russia as a crewmember traveling to the Russian Space Station Mir, that she experienced the advantages of a customized, pressurized spacesuit.
Speaking on day three of the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando about spacesuit advances, Dunbar shared how she was so comfortable in the customized Sokol Pressure suit, that she napped for four hours while testing the suit/SOYUZ seat combination in a vacuum chamber at Star City, home to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow.
Challenges with Fit and Customization
“Poorly fitting pressure suits that reduce mobility and have a high energy cost impact both mission success and safety. But customization had not been used since the Apollo program, where each crewmember had three custom suits: one for flight, one for back-up, and one for training,” she explained.
During the Shuttle program era, NASA went to a modular design for suits with five “chest sizes” and mix-and-match set of arms and legs, said Dunbar, recalling that the result was “suits that didn’t fit everyone as well as they should.” Some astronauts experienced injuries during missions such as shoulder issues that required surgery when they returned home. These problems are currently captured as risks by both the NASA engineering and human research organizations.
She asked: “How can we use new modern digital engineering tools to revisit customization to maximize performance, and reduce injury, in a cost-effective and schedule-sensitive manner?”
Today, as director of the Aerospace Human Systems Laboratory in the Aerospace Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, Dunbar is bringing her unique experience to bear, spearheading research that could inform what future astronauts will wear on missions to Mars and teaching students about “Human Systems Integration.”
NASA Funds Digital Thread Research
NASA was so interested in her digital concept that they gave her a Phase 1 NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) grant for the development of an EVA suit digital thread. Using tools such as 3D human scanners and finite element (FEA) technology to model the pressurized fabric layers of the suits, she hopes to create a digital system where custom spacesuits, optimized for joint mobility and energy expenditure before manufacture, will become a reality. This step in the digital thread is called “the virtual twin.”
“Spacesuits are not a fashion statement,” said the former NASA astronaut. Instead, think of it as “a human-shaped spacecraft.”
In addition to being pressurized, the 14-layer EVA suit generally includes a communication system, life support (oxygen for breathing and CO2 removal), thermal management, displays and controls, battery power, computers, advanced materials, radiation mitigation, micro-meteoroid protection, and sensors. When pressurized, fabrics become rigid (think of a balloon). If the joints are not properly designed or positioned with respect to the astronauts’ joints, an astronaut can lose as much as 50% of their effective strength, experience reduced mobility, and expend more energy in required EVA exploration tasks.
Dunbar’s research could also benefit current efforts by Axiom Space, which is designing the new EVA suit for the lunar Artemis mission. Axiom unveiled the AxEMU (Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit) prototype in spring 2023. Featuring new tech, safety features, and enhanced comfort and mobility, the AxEMU includes innovative life-support systems, pressure garments, and avionics. It’s designed to accommodate 1%-99% of the U.S. population.
Having a future tool to virtually evaluate the suit for that large range of anthropometric sizes before manufacturing could mitigate future performance challenges. SpaceX is currently designing customized suits, but could also benefit from virtual performance evaluations (virtual twin) prior to manufacture.
The Gold Standard for Spacesuit Design
Dunbar considers the dual goals of maximizing mobility and reducing energy expenditure “the gold rings” for spacesuit design.
“I wanted to take it [spacesuit design] from the Pillsbury Doughboy stage to ‘The Martian’ stage,” said Dunbar, referring to the advancements in suit design from the 1970s and 1980s to what was shown in the futuristic Mars adventure film starring Matt Damon.
Using human digital scanners such as 3dMD and VITUS in her lab that can deliver millimeter accuracy, she took the approach of aircraft designers: building a virtual twin.
“The goal is to integrate the virtual suit with the virtual person, and to model the torque and forces required to deform a pressurized joint using FEA tools,” explained Dunbar. “By iterating sleeve dimensions, joint designs, material properties, and delta pressures through sensitivity testing, we can identify critical factors for performance.”
Dunbar has advised one Ph.D. student and three M.S. students on this topic, all with published papers, both for modelling and breadboard testing. She plans to present an overview of the current research later this year.
Raising the TRL of the Virtual Twins for Suit Design
“We’re continuing our work,” she said, estimating that her lab’s efforts to build virtual twins for suit design is currently at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3-4. To raise the TRL will require industry partners,” Dunbar said.
The Texas A&M researcher’s vision for tomorrow’s astronauts is powerful yet simple: “I step into the scanner. A few days later, I have a suit that comfortably fits and is mobile, and because it may be designed for Mars, it will be reliable, relatively simple, and easily repairable.”
While it’s still early days, Dunbar is hopeful that her lab is on the right path to create a future platform that delivers on that vision.
To learn more about Bonnie Dunbar’s innovative work and the process envisioned to support future spacesuits, check out a 2023 NASA/NIAC book, Made-to-Order Spacesuits featuring NASA Inventor Bonnie Dunbar.
Tackling the Big Questions
‘We must continue to do the really hard things,’ said JPL’s Director in the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum’s opening plenary session
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla.– The 10th and only female director of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) opened the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum Monday, highlighting the hard questions that JPL answers in its unique role as a federally funded R&D center operated by CalTech for NASA.
Laurie Leshin, who has been at the helm of JPL since 2022, shared how JPL’s work focuses on answering three fundamental questions: “What is our destiny on Earth?”, “Are we alone?”, and “How do we lead the future?”
She implored the audience to continue striving for knowledge. “If I have one message for you in this time of change in our country, it is we must continue to do the really hard things,” she said. “Our job as a nation in order to lead is not to do what’s easy…or what you can predict exactly how it’s going to go…Our job is to do the things that are ridiculously hard.”
Understanding Earth
Leshin pointed out that while JPL is most known for its work in space exploration, it also brings decades of history contributing to understanding Earth using cutting-edge space-based radars capable of measuring pollution, ocean rise, and urban heat, among other items critical to understanding climate change and predicting natural disasters. One important focus is identifying super emitters of methane, an odorless gas invisible to the naked eye that is responsible for 30–40% of global warming (due to its structure, methane traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide, making it 80 times more harmful than CO2 for 20 years after its release). Runaway methane leaks in pipelines cost oil and gas companies $1 billion a year, she noted. Methane is now visible from orbit thanks to the EMIT tool attached to the International Space Station.
JPL also is finding and mapping heat islands in big cities such as Los Angeles and Houston, where concrete jungles are adding to the heat issue. Insights from the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, or ECOSTRESS mission, is helping cities find hot spots. It has led one neighborhood in Los Angeles to use a reflective coating on streets to lower one street’s temperatures by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to a noticeably cooler environment for residents.
Leshin said JPL researchers are working with global partners to map Earth’s water to better understand how rivers and lakes respond to flooding. In a first-ever collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), JPL will launch the NISAR Earth-observation radar this spring that will help view changes to the Earth’s surface so people can prepare for volcanoes, earthquakes, and landslides. According to Leshin, it will provide “unprecedented eyes on Earth.”
Finding Proof of Life Beyond Earth
In exploring the question of “Are we alone?” Leshin observed, “In some ways I like to say we are in a space race with ourselves in trying to answer this question.”
There’s a race to find evidence of life beyond Earth, and the big questions is where will the evidence come from — Mars, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or an exoplanet?
JPL is tackling this quest across all those avenues and has made significant inroads over the last few decades studying the surface of Mars. Missions have gone from larger ground-based rovers to a new way of exploring the Red Planet from the air.
“Today we are there with Perseverance,” said Leshin, noting that the rover recently collected “incredible samples” from a rock that points to ancient life on Mars. The rover’s instruments detected organic compounds within the rock, which are essential to all known life. These rocks and other samples are housed in tubes inside Perseverance, but how and when they will find their way back to Earth for study is a big question. “Landing on Mars is really stupid hard,” she added.
Rethinking Mars’ Sample Return
JPL has spent significant time rethinking how it does Mars sample return. NASA is discussing the path forward with media on Tuesday, 7 January. A 2023 assessment indicated that returning Mars samples would take until 2040 at a price tag of $11 billion. JPL’s concept would cut the cost in half and the timeline to a decade. Leshin said the approach will include heavy industry collaboration to get these rocks back. NASA’s proposal will use the stacking technology that has successfully landed the last two rovers on Mars to get a big lander with a rocket on board down to the surface of Mars, load it with the sample tubes and returning it to Earth safely. She also indicated that she’s very open to leveraging SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to get the lander to the Red Planet, which wouldn’t occur for another decade at the earliest, she stated, adding that partners such as the European Space Agency will play a key role in getting the samples home.
Another exciting avenue for investigating evidence of life beyond Earth is through ocean worlds. Two months ago, JPL launched the Europa Clipper probe to Europa, a moon of Jupiter. “It’s doing great. It’s flying beautifully,” said Leshin, noting that it will fly by Mars on 1 March, and will come back to Earth before it heads to Jupiter, where it is expected to arrive in 2030.
“We think there are two Earth oceans worth of liquid water on Europa,” she added, explaining that the ingredients for life will likely be present beneath those oceans.
“One of the challenges with deep space exploration is you have to be patient,” said Leshin, who described the Europa effort as “a generational quest.” She noted the wait is worth it because “the science will be incredible.”
JPL also sees promise in exoplanets – deploying transit spectroscopy as one of the lab’s tools to discover distant planets that are so far away that they can only be detected through the brightness of an individual star. To date, NASA has found over 5,500 exoplanets.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October 2026, will provide an even wider of view of these planets and other galaxies.
JPL also is investing in autonomous capabilities and the next generation of robotics. One such innovation is EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor), a 14-foot snake-like robot. JPL is already testing a prototype, which is winding down frozen crevasses on Earth. “It’s got to be smart enough to make its own decisions,” she noted, adding that the JPL team had to innovate around the form factor as well as the avionics and how it works and “thinks.”
Leading the Future
In closing, Leshin said the work of JPL is focused on driving humanity forward through the forefront of technology. “We’re incredibly proud of the work we do. And we can answer the biggest, hardest questions if we dare mighty things together.”
Reaction to Leshin’s lecture was well received by attendees.
“It was a nice flyover of the work they do at JPL,” said Egbert Hood, an aerospace engineer at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas. “It was interesting to hear of all the missions they have ongoing – and some for them had nothing to do with landing on a moon or planet, it was just exploration of space. It was good to get a new awareness of JPL.”
Amanda Simpson, CEO, Third Segment, expressed excitement for Leshin’s message. “We have to do the hard things! It brought to mind President Kennedy’s moon speech. Space is hard. If we only concentrate on doing the easy things then we’re not actually making any progress. The way we treat going off our planet tells us so much about ourselves. And to do that, we must do the things that are hard. To do that together and to challenge ourselves – those are the keys that are going to make the difference for the future. Inspiring the future is so critical for keeping this industry, this ecosystem in aerospace, moving forward to entice and inspire the future generations.”
CJ Negrete, an undergraduate student at Cal Poly Pomona in Los Angeles, previously interned at JPL, where she worked to increase the technology readiness level of oscillating heat pipe (OHP) technology, commonly used in high-heat density electronics and exoplanet detection. She credited Leshin’s presence as a plenary speaker as one reason she decided to attend the forum, saying that having a woman at the helm of JPL “is brand new and unheard of.”
“Dr. Leshin is leading the pack of what women are more than capable of doing in the industry and we have to come and support her,” she said.
On Demand Recording Available
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USAF Science & Technology Chief: New Urgency to Embrace Digital Transformation to Strengthen the Force’s Resiliency and Ability to Compete Against Near-Peer Rivals
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
Watch On Demand
ORLANDO, Fla. – The ability to field critical capabilities in the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has never been more urgent, a senior Air Force official told AIAA SciTech Forum attendees.
“We are in competition with near-competitive nations and China in particular is now on par to deliver new capabilities in seven years or less,” said Kristen Baldwin, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force.
She noted that in comparison, USAF programs take an average of 16 years to deliver new capability. “We see digital transformation as a true disruptive business practice that we can bring to bear. We have to invest now – we have to invest in new capabilities.”
Baldwin, speaking via Zoom on the second day of the forum, oversees a $5 billion budget across multiple research sites worldwide, focusing on digital engineering, cyber resiliency, and the service’s science and technology portfolio.
She described the Air Force’s digital materiel management approach, which includes six key initiatives to enhance data security, training, and IT infrastructure. Baldwin also outlined the integration of digital strategies across the Air Force and Space Force, including putting the government’s Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) and other government reference architectures as requirements in contracts. MOSA is the cornerstone of new and legacy platforms and weapons.
Baldwin also mentioned the five pillars of the Air Force’s engineering strategy that has been embraced by U.S. allies, particularly in the UK and Australia. Her team’s Digital Materiel Management (DMM) approach has led to both schedule acceleration and technology improvements.
She stressed the need for continuous engagement with industry partners and international collaborations to drive digital transformation forward. The USAF has created two digital consortia – the Industry Association Consortium (IAC) and the Digital Acceleration Consortium (DAC). The IAC provides an open collaborative opportunity for the defense industrial base to help identify barriers and develop solutions associated with the rapid, full-scale adoption of DMM. The DAC recommends solutions modernizing IT infrastructure, compatible Integrated Digital Environments, secure access to data, and common data standards, policy, and contracting language.
During the Q&A, Baldwin agreed that as government goes more digital, it will be more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
“We have to implement that cyber resilience to really manage our data. We can’t rely on just network and perimeter defense. We’ve got to be able to implement and manage that security of our data, so these environments we’re building and the way we classify that data is a key foundational element of our digital transformation approach. We have to be agile in the way we can maneuver to respond to cyber threats. We have to be continuously aware and adapt,” she said.
The final question ended on a fun note: What did Baldwin consider the most feasible technological innovation from the Star Wars universe that could be developed within the next 50 years, and what challenges would engineers and scientists face in making it a reality?
“I love the idea of robotics and image holograms. The advancement of robotics as well as holograms can really help to transform the way that we support our forces. When we think of this urgency in national security, we’re going to find ourselves in situations where we are not going to have the ability to wait for delivery of future capability. We’ll have to reset and regroup in place.”
Responding to Baldwin’s presentation, Terry Hill, digital engineering program manager for NASA in Washington, D.C., said, “It’s good to hear the Air Force’s plan. Their approach to MOSA and their commitment to moving to a digital ecosystem is refreshing because that’s where NASA is wanting to go and we’re trying to work across agencies to best leverage all our different investments.”
Hill added that the Air Force’s emphasis on cybersecurity also benefits civil agencies like NASA. “Focusing on different areas and sharing solutions is definitely the way forward,” he said.
On Demand Recording Available
ORNL: Troubleshooting Turbulence – the Next ‘Killer App’ for Exascale Supercomputing?
By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team
ORLANDO, Fla. – The aerospace community got a rare look at the capabilities and processing might of the world’s first exascale supercomputer during a plenary session at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.
Taking the stage in Orlando, Bronson Messer II, director of science for the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in eastern Tennessee, admitted that while he is an astrophysicist, not an engineer, he shares common interests with the AIAA community: namely, solving tough problems in a world where the pace of technology advances continues to slow – even as the need for smarter, more advanced problem-solving is accelerating.
“I’ve heard throughout my career that Moore’s Law is dead. It’s finally actually true. This…doubling of performance…every 18 months has hit the end of the road,” he explained.
Messer said Moore’s Law’s demise requires scientists to think about how they’re going to reformulate problems and solve them in a much different way. And one of the biggest technical challenges facing the aerospace engineering community is turbulence.
“Turbulence may be the killer app for exascale computers,” Messer said.
Turbulence has a complex and unpredictable nature, making it difficult to accurately model and predict. That’s especially true for “clear-air turbulence,” which is invisible to radar. A 2023 study found that aircraft turbulence soared by up to 55% and some regions, including North America, the north Atlantic, and Europe, are set to experience several hundred percent more turbulence in the coming decade.
Enter Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer, which became operational in 2022 with 100 times the computing power found in typical universities, labs, or industrial environments. It can process billions upon billions of operations per second. Frontier’s processing speed is so powerful, it would take every person on Earth combined more than four years to do what the supercomputer can in one second.
“Frontier has more in common with the Hubble Space Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider (a particle accelerator) than with your laptop,” Messer emphasized.
Messer shared how GE Aerospace did one of the largest turbulence simulations ever attempted to study ways to negate the effect of turbulence on commercial flights. NASA is leveraging Frontier to understand the role of turbulence in flying and landing on Mars.
Concluding his talk, Messer invited proposals year-round from the audience to get time on the Frontier system, which is open to U.S. and most global researchers with some exceptions. He cautioned that only projects with the right level of computing complexity will benefit from exascale computing.
During the Q&A he said that his team has concluded an RFP for Discovery, the next exascale supercomputer that will replace Frontier.
When asked about exascale computing’s role in quantum computing, Messer said, “I’m a quantum advocate. My suspicion is over the next decade quantum computing will make the biggest impact on what I would call quantum problems – problems like computational chemistry, which may have an impact on things like aerospace.” He said there is a small team at ONRL looking at doing compressible hydrodynamics using quantum computing.
“I think the ability to do that on a very large scale is a way off,” he concluded.
“It was a very interesting talk,” said forum attendee Mike Ferguson, a flight test engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland. “I definitely think there are problems at our lab that could use that kind of computing infrastructure, but it would take some investigating and some actual deep thinking from all of us to figure that out.”
On Demand Recording Available
Delta Rocket Makes Final Flight
Ars Technica reports, “The final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket took off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. The Delta IV Heavy, one of the world’s most powerful rockets, launched for the 16th and final time Tuesday. It was the 45th and last flight of a Delta IV launcher and the final rocket named Delta to ever launch, ending a string of 389 missions dating back to 1960.”
Full Story (Ars Technica)
Videos
Delta IV Heavy launches for final time with secret US spy satellite, 9 April 2024
(VideoFromSpace; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches 69th Orbital Flight of 2023 from Florida
Orlando Sentinel reported that a SpaceX Falcon 9 “took off from the 39th time from Cape Canaveral this year, marking the 49th SpaceX flight from the Space Coast and 69th orbital mission among all of its launch sites.” The rocket “lifted off from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 10 p.m. after poor weather conditions delayed earlier attempts.” The first-stage booster “made its 10th flight once again making a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean.” SpaceX has “flown all but three of the Space Coast’s 52 missions this year, with Relativity Space adding one and United Launch Alliance managing two more.”
Full Story (Orlando Sentinel)
Video
SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Starlink 6-19 Mission
(NASA Spaceflight; YouTube)
China’s Ceres-1 Rocket Achieves Orbit with First Launch from Mobile Sea Platform
Space News reports that China’s Galactic Energy “conducted its first sea launch early Wednesday, also marking a ninth successive successful launch for the commercial company.” The Ceres-1 solid rocket “lifted off from a transport erector launcher on a mobile sea platform off the coast of Haiyang, Shandong province, at 5:34 a.m. Eastern (0934 UTC) Sept. 5.” Aboard were four satellites “for Guodian Gaoke, a commercial firm constructing its Tianqi low-Earth orbit narrow-band Internet of Things constellation.” The launch “carried Tianqi satellites 21-24, with the spacecraft targeting an 800-kilometer-altitude orbit.” The satellites are “equipped with chemical propulsion systems allowing orbital maneuvers. Guodian Gaoke has 21 satellites in orbit and aims to complete the 38-satellite constellation in 2024.”
Full Story (Space News – Subscription Publication)
Video
First sea launch of China’s commercial CERES-1 rocket, August 2, 2023
(CGTN; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches 13 Satellites for US Space Development Agency
Space News reported SpaceX on Saturday launched a Falcon 9 rocket “at 7:25 a.m. Pacific from Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, carrying 13 U.S. military satellites.” According to Space News, “The mission to low Earth orbit was the second launch of the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 0 mesh network of military communications and missile tracking satellites.” Spaceflight Now reported the launch was the third attempt “in as many days for the mission,” as “a problem with the Falcon 9’s engine 4 scrubbed the launch on Aug. 31 and on Sept. 1 the countdown was halted with 20 minutes left on the clock by a balky valve in a ground system.”
Full Story (Space News)
Video
Space Development Agency’s Second Tranche 0 Mission, September 2, 2023
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches 22 Next-Generation Starlink Satellites
UPI reports that SpaceX successfully “launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying nearly two dozen satellites for its Starlink Internet mission into space early Friday.” The rocket’s payload included 22 second-generation mini Starlink satellites and was “launched at 2:31 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” The launch comes “after the mission suffered two previous delays, according to Spaceflight Now, with its first launch scheduled in April and it second for Thursday.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
Starlink Mission
Friday, May 19 at 12:41 a.m. ET, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched 22 second-generation Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches Starlink Mission, Recovers Booster Successfully for 191st Time
UPI reports that on Sunday morning, SpaceX “successfully deployed another batch of Starlink satellites into space and successfully landed its first-stage booster.” The Falcon 9 rocket “lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station just after midnight.” The first-stage booster then “returned to Earth and landed on the drone ship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic Ocean about eight minutes after takeoff.” It marked SpaceX’s 191st successful “landing of the first stage, including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
Starlink Mission
A SpaceX Falcon 9 launches 56 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit Sunday, May 14 at 1:03 a.m. ET, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Falcon Heavy Lifts Off Following Scrubbed Mission
UPI reports that SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket on Sunday night from Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A, loaded with a payload of competitor ViaSat-3 Americas broadband Internet satellite, as well as satellites by Astranis and Gravity Space. The mission “was scheduled to launch Friday evening but the mission was aborted with less than a minute left in the countdown.” Unlike most SpaceX missions, neither the side boosters “nor the core of the Falcon Heavy rocket will be recovered as ‘a lot of extra performance’ was required to deliver ViaSat-3’s 13,000-pound satellite into geostationary orbit above the Earth, Atticus Vadera, propulsion engineer with SpaceX, said during the live broadcast.” ViaSat-3 Americas satellite “is part of its network that seeks to provide satellite Internet the world over and is a competitor to SpaceX’s own Starlink Internet satellite constellation.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
ViaSat-3 Americas Mission
On Sunday, April 30 at 8:26 p.m. ET, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launched the ViaSat-3 Americas mission from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites
UPI reports that SpaceX “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of 22 Starlink satellites into space early Friday from Florida’s famed Cape Canaveral, after having scrubbed the launch of a separate mission Thursday night.” The rocket “launched at 12:01 a.m. EDT Friday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” Up to four backup launch opportunities “were available to SpaceX to launch the nearly two dozen satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will join Starlink’s constellation of orbitals that provide high-speed, low-latency Internet around the globe.” The launch occurred shortly “after SpaceX scrubbed a Flacon Heavy mission that was to liftoff late Thursday.” No reason for “aborting the mission was immediately made public.” The first-stage booster “used in the early Friday launch flew its 15th mission.” After deploying its payload “into space, the launch vehicle returned to Earth where it landed upon the autonomous A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.” The launch “was SpaceX’s 50th of the year and 249th overall.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
Starlink Mission, 26 August 2023
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Successfully Launches More Starlink Satellites
UPI reports that SpaceX successfully “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of nearly two dozen Starlink satellites into space from Florida’s famed Cape Canaveral late Wednesday.” The rocket “launched at 11:36 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.” The mission “deployed 22 additional Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will join a constellation of thousands that provide high-speed, low latency Internet worldwide.” The first-stage booster “returned to Earth where it landed upon the autonomous barge A Shortfall of Gravitas that had awaited its return in the Atlantic Ocean.” The launch – which “was SpaceX’s 56th of the year and 255th overall – came hours before SpaceX was to launch a second Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of 21 Starlink orbitals from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base at 1:42 am PT, or 4:42 a.m. EDT.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
Starlink Mission, August 16, 2023
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches 22 More Starlink Satellites into Orbit
UPI reports that SpaceX successfully “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with another payload of Starlink satellites into space from Florida late Sunday.” The rocket “launched at 10:41 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending the 22 satellites into low-Earth orbit where they will join Starlink’s constellation of thousands of orbitals that provide high-speed, low-latency Internet worldwide.” SpaceX Senior Quality Systems Engineering Manager Kate Tice said the weather presented only a “10% of violating our launch commit criteria.” The launch “was SpaceX’s 53rd of the year and 252nd to date.” The first-stage booster “returned to Earth where it successfully landed upon the Shortfall of Gravitas droneship that was awaiting its arrival in the Atlantic Ocean.” Both fairing halves “used in the mission were flight tested, with one half flying its eighth mission and the other flying its 10th.”
Full Story (UPI)
Video
Starlink Mission, August 6, 2023
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites, Scrubs Second Mission Planned for Sunday
Florida Today reports that SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 on Sunday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9 rocket carried 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. The company now has over 4,500 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth. The second of two planned launches was scrubbed due to weather. After the scrub of Sunday’s second launch, NASA and SpaceX teams “re-targeted 11:47 a.m. EDT Monday, June 5, for the next mission carrying cargo to the International Space Station.”
Full Story (Florida Today)
Video
Starlink Mission
On Sunday, June 4, at 8:20 a.m. ET, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched 22 second-generation Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
2024 AIAA Dryden Lectureship in Research Awarded to Peyman Givi, University of Pittsburgh
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Lecture will be Delivered on 8 January During 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum
December 5, 2023 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce the 2024 AIAA Dryden Lectureship in Research is awarded to Peyman Givi, Distinguished Professor and James T. Macleod Chair of Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Givi will deliver his lecture, “The Promise of Quantum Computing for Aerospace Science and Engineering,” Monday, 8 January, 1730 hrs ET, during the 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum, Orlando, Florida.
Forum registration is available now. Journalists can request a Press Pass here. In addition, the lecture will be available to view by livestream at aiaa.org/scitech.
The Dryden Lectureship in Research is one of the most prestigious lectureships bestowed by the Institute. Since the inaugural lecture in 1961, it has been a catalyst for sharing research advancements and knowledge. This premier lecture is named in honor of Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, a renowned aerospace leader and a director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, as well as the first deputy administrator of NASA when the agency was created in 1958. The award emphasizes the importance of basic research in advancing aeronautics and astronautics.
Peyman Givi is the Distinguished Professor and James T. Macleod Chair of Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1984, and B.E. from Youngstown State University in Ohio in 1980. Previously, he was the University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering from 1988 to 2002. Givi also has worked as a Research Scientist at Flow Industries, Inc., in Seattle, Washington. He has had frequent visiting appointments at the NASA Langley and Glenn Research Centers.
Givi is among the first 15 engineering faculty nationwide who received the White House Faculty Fellowship from President George H.W. Bush. He also received NASA Public Service Medal, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. In addition to being an AIAA Fellow, Givi is Fellow of AAAS, AAM, APS, ASME, the Combustion Institute, and was named ASME Engineer of the Year in Pittsburgh in 2007. He is currently on the Editorial Boards of the AIAA Journal, Combustion Theory and Modelling, Computers & Fluids, and Journal of Applied Fluid Mechanics.
Givi’s lecture will address the “second quantum revolution” — we are now at a stage that we can use “quantum science” to invent “quantum technologies.” An example of this technology is Quantum Computing (QC), which has been experiencing significant growth over the last decade, both in hardware and software. Used in appropriate ways, quantum mechanics can provide powerful resources for solving certain classes of problems, achieving cost scalings with the size of the problem that are not available to existing “classical” computers — this is known as the “quantum advantage.”
QC is starting to make an impact in practical aerospace engineering and science applications. The major contributions have been based on “quantum-ready” and “quantum inspired” algorithms. The former deals with algorithms that are shown to provide quantum advantage, and can be used when error-corrected digital, (unitary) gate, universal quantum computers are routinely available and utilized. The latter refers to computational methodologies that are classical but are inspired by quantum physics. Both methodologies are shown to capture some of the intricate structures of classical problems of interest to the aerospace community. This demonstration of quantum advantage will certainly play a significant role in enhancing the ecosystem of QC similar to that currently established in the silicon-based classical computer technology.
For more information about the AIAA Honors and Awards program, contact Patricia A. Carr at [email protected].
Media Contact: Rebecca B. Gray, APR, [email protected], 804.397.5270 (cell)
About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit aiaa.org, and follow AIAA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
SpaceX Launches Galaxy 37 Satellite from Cape Canaveral
Florida Today reports that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket “vaulted away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early Thursday to carry a commercial communications satellite to orbit.” The 230-foot rocket “lifted off from Launch Complex 40 at 1 a.m. EDT.” The mission for Luxembourg-based operator Intelsat “carried the Galaxy 37 satellite, built by Maxar, which is the latest in a series to deliver television and communications services to customers around the globe.” The rocket’s first stage, which “flew its sixth mission to date, successfully landed on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida.” Of the 39 launches from the Space Coast this year, SpaceX “has carried out all but two of them.”
Full Story (Florida Today)
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Intelsat G-37 Mission
(SpaceX; YouTube)